River Song, Companion Plus
by Regency
Summary: AU. The Doctor never imagined that she'd mean so much. Before he was in love, he just loved her. (An alternate origin story for River Song and a non-canon love story for River and Ten.) In progress.
1. Chapter 1

Author: Regency

Title: River Song, Companion Plus

Pairings: River/Doctor (Ten&Eleven), minor Amy/Rory, hints of past River/Other

Spoilers: Time of Angels/Flesh & Stone, The Pandorica Opens/Big Bang

Summary: He never imagined that she'd mean so much. Before he was in love, he just loved her.

Author's Notes: I've recently found myself curious as to the kind of relationship the Doctor's tenth regeneration and River could have had given enough time. This was started way back before _A Good Man Goes to War_, so it's been totally Jossed, but I thought I'd share anyway.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from _Doctor Who._ They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

* * *

She may be the maddest woman the Doctor's met that he didn't make that way. She isn't Sarah Jane Smith or Donna Noble, but she is brilliant. She saves his life on Tuio Mau with her smile—no, she quite literally saves his life by dazzling the native warriors with a naughty grin until they all propose marriage. The Tuionese evolved without any of the muscles necessary to compose humanoid expressions of joy. They're champion scowlers, but smiles are out of their league. River is a goddess in their eyes. He sees why.

She's got a dozen ritual offerings draped across her body when she returns to the TARDIS hours after him. They're all tokens of affection from potential suitors. She is sniffing a wreath of flowers when she passes him, petting a cord of shells that dangles, wrapped twice, about her waist. Someone has entangled the local ivy in her hair and there's florescent dust glittering from cheek to cheek, drawn across the bridge of her nose. She is still smiling when she disappears from the console room into the ship's depths. He is smiling in her wake.

There are endless moments like this stretched behind him and he fast finds himself fascinated by all the ways she isn't the woman he expects. He expects her to flirt familiarly, to flaunt the interest of others in the hopes of inspiring a display of jealousy he admits he's beginning to feel. He expects too much touching and _sweetie_ and _spoilers_, but there isn't any of that when she's around.

There's _duck_ and _he is a bit handsome, isn't it he_ and that hair and that gun, her secret smiles with all their secret meanings. There is this complex woman who wraps him up in knots and saves his life and risks her own right beside him, who laughs in the face of danger the way he laughs in the face of archaeologists. She's very bad and very good, and she's his companion.

Right now today, he doesn't think he could have a better one.

**…**

He isn't sure how to respond when he meets her first husband. _First_, he thinks and he's embarrassed at the placating tone the word takes in his mind. He knows he'll trust her completely one day, enough to tell her his name, enough to give her the screwdriver which never leaves his side. He assumes this means they'll marry, that he'll fall hearts over head for her and they'll marry. On their wedding night, he'll tell her his name. Now, he can't help wondering if she'll be comparing him to the first, even then.

The husband is an unplanned trip to the past and by the time they've left, the Doctor knows how he dies and when. He sits beside her as they float in the vastness of space and watches a star come to life, pretending all the while that she isn't mourning a love she still feels.

She stays in her room for days after and he doesn't mind much letting time go by while she grieves. There isn't anything in the universe he wants to see, not without her.

She comes out eventually, in a bright green sweater, work pants, and boots. She says, "Let's save someone," and the feeling it evokes is so familiar his hands begin their work before his brain catches on.

He does a fair job of acting on par with his usual self. "Anywhere particular in mind?" He hopes she doesn't say the husband, he'd be disappointed if she did. She doesn't disappoint, merely drops into the jump seat and waits for his nod to pull the final lever.

They save a world of orphans that day. Although it's a touch cliché, he doesn't mind because she smiles again after. He leaves a bunch of bananas on her pillow as a symbol of his gratitude. It isn't a flower in her hair, but he thinks someday she'll understand.

**…**

Her mind catches fire during their fourth year together.

They meet a telepathic race that feeds on psychic oddity: extraordinary minds, that is. A Time Lord is a luxury, a fine delicacy made all the finer by its rarity. River makes the eccentrics of the bunch pant—_the eccentrics of the eccentrics_, he thinks but doesn't spare breath to say. The flurry of psychic activity that builds around her makes him wince, overwhelmed by her plight combined with his own.

She screams without words and it's the first time he's been aware of anything that happens within her mind. Her brain has always been a steel trap keeping him out. Now all it's done is shut her in. He predicts her death by fifteen seconds. He doesn't predict the glow of regenerative energy that floats heavenward from her mouth instead.

River goes out in a blaze of glory while he begins to lose his patience with their hosts. He's never cared for psychic warfare, but when needs must he'll do what's hard. In the aftermath of a Time Lord-strong psychic burst, they are another people lost, and it becomes something else to regret. But it saves them and he finds he regrets that slightly less.

Resurrected, River reaches the TARDIS before he does, and then collapses inside. They return to the vortex and she sleeps for a week. He wants to but can't look away from her for fear she might disappear. He doesn't know how she managed to hide for so long; now that he knows he isn't alone, he never plans to let her hide again.

Though her psychic shields are compromised, he stays clear of the dreams she dreams. She'll let him in when she's ready and he's grown the patience of a saint. Seven days she sleeps while he hardly blinks.

Someday, this woman's going to know his name. The thought doesn't frighten him so much anymore.

**…**

He expects it will take time, he doesn't expect years. A linear decade falls in the face of River's unwillingness to discuss her regeneration. She is still curls and green eyes, still elegant and vibrant and brilliantly lethal, but she's cracked. The fissures show where her demons seep and they become his night terrors as well. It's a gift that he hardly sleeps.

She has a talent for piloting the TARDIS, or perhaps his ship simply adores her and makes easier the task. He gets that sense because she beams when River arrives and dims a touch when she departs. He doesn't know what they say to each other, but it's a rare occasion that he and River argue and the TARDIS takes his side. He wouldn't need a full complement of fingers to count them.

River is a child of time, though she never confesses how. Her origins are her secret, stored behind the demons that have come to torment them both. Oddly enough, he's grown fond of her mystery. All these years and she hasn't bored him yet. There's too much still to learn.

**…**

He knows River Song for twelve linear years before he realizes she's begun to love him. By then, he's already loved her for seven. She is far from the baby-faced student she was when she ambled up to him at Second Baliol on New Jupiter and asked his name. She's a doctor of archaeology and none too afraid to pop him good should he decide to mock her chosen profession. He's had a dozen new companions since then, but none of them hold a candle to her. There are days when he doesn't hold a candle to her, either.

He tells her he loves her on the relative anniversary of the first fall of Gallifrey. It's been a very long time.

She tells him to sleep on his broken hearts and see her in the morning. The words cut, but she kisses him before he goes and he knows she means well.

The morning brings tea and banana bread and her. She's waiting in the kitchen, patiently stirring her cuppa while he situates himself across the table.

He says, "Good morning."

She says, "I love you, too."

He drinks his tea as she cuts the bread. They hold hands quietly during breakfast.

They make love furiously through lunch.

They hold hands tightly during dinner. He's mortified of what might happen if he lets her go. She's blissfully ignorant of the end.

**…**

He reads a page of her diary at year twenty:

_Not every child of Gallifrey burned_.

He doesn't get farther than that before she sees. As it is, they fight about it for ages. They don't live in linear time, or anything so clear as back-to-front. He doesn't speak to a version of her who knows what he's done for so long that he wonders if he ever will again. For those whose lives span centuries, domestic spats can, and often do, span decades.

She kisses him hello again on a cruise barge in the Kasterborous constellation. Its path takes them past the place of Gallifrey's rest. The enormity of what was lost is only eclipsed by the emptiness left behind. He forces himself to face the void, because someone has to and he's the only one left who can. _The only one other than her._

Her hand finds his on the edge of the tourist crowd. He'd know her blind from her touch alone. They watch the sum of their history disappear in the distance as the ship engages its faster-than-light engines and carries them away. They're so accustomed to its absence that they don't bother to say goodbye.

He plans to propose when they return to the TARDIS, but she asks him first. They've been everything except married for dozens of years, including those they've spent apart. Waiting any longer would feel like tempting fate, so he says yes. She says yes to the question he didn't get to ask.

There is no ceremony and there are no guests. No one to officiate and no temple to hold them, yet they're married just the same. With this ring, he bio-damps and promises and loves. With hers, she does the same. He will love her every face as she already loves each of his.

Never mind that the face she wears now is her last. He'll squeeze every bit of hope he can out of this life. He finds it unlikely he'll be able to feel any hope at all in the next one.

**…**

Then, something snaps in Time as something always does.

It wakes him from an unlikely sleep beside his wife of ninety-six years, or rather three years and forty-six days, properly. Not that he bothers counting. She has been his wife since she first uttered his name in that damnable Library; she will be his wife until she utters it there again, and after.

He rolls to his feet, clumsy with disorientation. Everything is a bit off-kilter, a bit lop-sided in his view. The timelines in his mind are tangling, straining for sense; the corridors of the TARDIS aren't much more for coherence. He can barely crawl in a straight line, much less walk. She's at his side before he makes up his mind to call her, her surer steps guiding him where he needs to be.

The console room is in a temporal uproar, warping forth and back between one era of its existence and the next. It's white and clinical, dark and brooding, coral and fantastic all at once. If he didn't know this was cause to worry, he'd think it was a cause to party heartily. He likes anomalies, nothing boring about an anomaly.

There's something about Weeping Angels and cracks in the universe and very, very bad that he has to take care of. But her secrets get in the way before he can set the controls. River goes utterly pale, his ship goes utterly still, and he doesn't believe in coincidences today any more than he did as a young, old fool.

"I'm really, very sorry," she says, and it's only linear cycles later that he understands why.

He's left with a jammed fob watch, an empty space where his ring never was, and an army of confused clerics waking up from a stupor. River is nowhere to be found, like Gallifrey, like his mind. No, she was never there at all. He sometimes forgets that he isn't the only one mad enough to rewrite time.

He'll never forget again.


	2. Chapter 2

_Anything that can be remembered can be brought back._

He tries always to remember her, he clings to that.

He keeps her things where she left them in the TARDIS. They weren't lost when time was rewritten without her, as the TARDIS exists in all timelines at once. The old girl remembers her, too, because she wants to. River Song gave her life to seal the cracks in the universe, but he doesn't think that's the way their story is supposed to end.

He's an idiot in her absence and reckless as an Earth day is short. It's losing Rose again, losing Donna; forsaking poor Martha and saying goodbye—one last time—to his Sarah Jane. He expected to have centuries with River; he didn't get even one.

Within a year, he dies without her and becomes someone new. The fire still burns but is tempered by the psychic block that separates one regeneration from another. He misses her desperately in moments of silence and inactivity; he survives through distraction and wonder. The man he is now makes friends and takes on companions—Amelia Pond, miraculous and impossible as she is, and the man who adores her—whom he grows to love. They are his friends, his new best mates and he guards them with his life while showing them the universe. He has nearly managed to forget when it happens, the next terrible thing: Rory Williams is wiped from existence.

It shouldn't have happened; the cracks should have been gone. His lady Time was lost to the cause and the Doctor rages at the idea that her loss was in vain. Amy doesn't know why she cries, though her Doctor does. He rages at a universe that would be so cruel as to give them all they had and take it away. But Amy doesn't remember, so he rages quietly.

The TARDIS is of a mind to do what she likes while he broods and finds them materializing hush soft within the gallery of Liz X's Royal Collection. Grief would keep him inside despite his fondness for mischief, yet she pushes him out, pulsing forcefully until his graceless feet go. He wanders into the darkness, heedful of his ship's telepathic prodding. There's something she believes he needs to see, he can only obey.

He feels the pull of the painting separate from his TARDIS' demand. He's met the man, the legend, the painter Vincent Van Gogh and would know his work anywhere regardless. It is his ship depicted, what remains of her in the moment of her decimation and it is his wife, waiting at her open doors, serene in the knowledge that all life ends, even hers. There are symbols beneath Vincent's signature, coordinates that ring blindingly familiar despite their anonymity. He doesn't take the painting—he and the Queen have not been on the best of terms for some time, he shan't risk it—but he does note the location. Things that can be remembered can be retrieved and he doesn't think it too much to hope.

**…**

They make their way to Britain in the Roman Age, safe under the banner of _Civus Romanus sum._ It is the only thing that keeps them safe in their oddity of dress and behaviour. They are Romans, they must be, for they are here; thus, they will be safe. Cleopatra is impressed by the Doctor's intellect but seems to find his conversation wanting. After all, he is no Marcus Antonius. Amy is distracted by the Centurions and the Doctor keeps a careful eye on her to ensure she doesn't become some adventuresome young Roman's war prize. It's not long since Boudica's era and Titian beauty remains both coveted and feared. He doesn't doubt that with her temper she could easily be taken for a direct descendant of the warrior queen herself.

In his pursuit of the oddity which has dragged him to this time, he nearly forgets why he came. It is only the earnest expression on a face forgotten by the universe that wakes him. He is tired and old and lost, and for once the Doctor doesn't mean himself. Rory Williams stands before him in the armour of a Centurion with scars and sword to match. He is an old friend, he is a new man, he is hope, and the Doctor hugs him tightly, his old companion, because he never forgot.

He nearly asks how but knows that the even the admirably well-read nurse from Leadworth wouldn't have the faintest clue what to say. The Doctor is the most intelligent being in the universe and he hasn't the faintest, either. Their reunion is marred only by Amelia's exasperated sigh and Rory's fear. She doesn't remember him and he doesn't know how to go un-remembered.

"Protect her," the Doctor advises. "If she can remember anything, she can remember how that feels." Amy wanders out, oblivious. Sometimes, it seems that without Rory she has forgotten half her senses. The Roman wanders out behinds her, as devoted in nonexistence as he was as part of her existence.

The Doctor rubs his ancient, new face, strangled by the recollection of that love. Nearly one hundred years of his own makes the sight of young lovers burn. He wears new skin and functions at the behest of fresh hearts, but his devotion remains the same. He wants her back.

He is following a trail his sonic picks up towards the mountains when he hears what can only be called a war cry. It is high yet guttural, undeniably the yell of a female of the species enraged. The Doctor knows too much of the work of the Romans to stand idly by. There are atrocities he cannot view for want of interference, but there are certain things he can do. Feet that were clumsy become certain and nimble. He follows the shouting, ignoring the soldiers that follow him, too. They can be dealt with but a life once ended cannot be saved.

The soldier he sees is half-clothed and kneeling on the ground outside a rough hut that the Doctor little doubts acts as a gaol. A woman stands above him with a gladius raised high above his head. She is dirty and panting, faded ginger hair hanging in limp curls down her back. She is nearly naked, surely bleeding, and furious. The shouting comes next and while the Doctor understands, he nearly doesn't believe.

_"You will not lay with my daughters again. If you attempt it, your life will be forfeit at my hand."_

The words he believes to be sure, history bears them out, but the voice…It matters not the language, nor the content, he would recognize River Song in an entirely new body, never mind an old century with an ancient, glorious name.

"You would challenge me, woman," the fallen Centurion sneers with all the disdain due a prisoner of war. She brings the hilt of the sword down hard on his disdainful pate and he slumps insensible into the dirt. Her sneer is superior.

_"I am Boudica, queen of the noble Iceni. Of course I challenge you."_

This is the woman he reveres.

Around him the Romans make reluctant gestures toward their swords. The Doctor realizes with dawning amusement that they're afraid. This woman stands before them in wait, her weapon of opportunity easy in hand and her expression promising ten-fold revenge for whatever they deal her. There is no question that she's good for it. None of them are eager to be the first to rush toward certain death; the Doctor can only agree. He raises his hands carefully and moves to separate himself from the potentially hostile forces. This would be the worst possible moment for misunderstanding.

"Hello," he starts, finding himself unsure what to say now that his prayers have been answered. She follows him with her senses though not with her eyes; those remain with the majority, skewering them with a constant gaze of rebellion and daring. They will not come; it's only a matter of their admitting as much and retreating in defeat.

They do so silently, dipping their heads in grudging respect as they go. Finally, it is merely the two of them and the unconscious man who neither chooses to concern themselves with overmuch. If he acts foolishly upon waking, he will die: the Doctor has no doubt that his breaths are numbered.

"Hello," he says again more softly, coaching himself to remain patient while she begins to regard him carefully. She is not a stoic woman, her curiosity and, dare he say, hope written in her eyes plain for him to see.

"I…We…I." She scowls in frustration, clears her throat, and tries again, "We was—were, home?" The words won't come and she kicks the supine man in futility. She's begging him to understand the way he always had. He strides toward her, intent on taking her into his arms, but she backs away, eyes wide in fear. He stops, hurt.

"River?"

She moves protectively in front of the entrance to the hut. "Don't. Please." The plea is hard-won and hard-felt. _She thinks I would…but I would never…_He knows the indignities visited upon her daughters and tries not to feel wounded to be numbered among those prospective offenders.

"I won't hurt them. I won't go near them, I promise."

"Me, then." It isn't a question. When she goes to undress herself of what rags still cling to her, he flushes more from anger than from any interest. She is more than half-starved, it breaks his hearts.

"No!" he shouts, then moderates himself as she startles, tightening her fist around the hilt of her sword. "No. No, please, I don't want…this. Not like this. Don't you remember me?"

A brief shake of the head is her response. He rakes his fingers through his ridiculous hair wondering how she could have forgotten him so quickly. Rory still remembers Amy; it is obviously possible to remember one's life after being launched into a crack in the universe. How could she have forgotten?

His mind is racing when he notices her approaching slowly out of the corner of his eye. She comes on silent, bare feet. The sword has found a home tucked into back of the worn tunic that barely covers her chest. He can see the scars and Iceni tribal markings inked deep into her flesh mingling across the planes of her underfed stomach and sinewy hips. A glyph of tangential circles orbits her navel, the Gallifreyan word for 'Joy.' That hadn't existed in their time together.

"You remember our language but not me?"

"Who?"

He cautiously extends his hand toward the mark to indicate his meaning. She sucks in a breath as his fingers begin to trace the tattoo.

"Joy. Something made you happy and you wanted to commemorate that with this mark." He drops to his knees to look up at her. He doesn't see any fear there, only what he feels inside. Curling his fingers about her waist, he adorns the glyph with a reverent kiss. "Joy. You came back to me and you've brought me joy."

She strokes a single finger down his cheek. "Joy," she says. He turns absently toward the touch that is lightning to his deprived skin. Somehow, he's forgotten what a caress from her can do. Somehow, he's forgotten much. But he remembers now. Keeping his eyes trained on hers, lest he rouse her fear anew, he reaches into his coat pocket for the trinket he is never without. The fob watch is battered and bruised the way she is; yet, just the same, it thrums with life.

"This is yours." He offers it to her, feeling shy as the day she proposed.

Gaze flickering between his eyes, she lifts her head in curiosity and takes hold of the heavy, vibrating timepiece. "Mine?" Her old tongue comes easier now that her memories are close at hand. He finds he has all the patience for it, now that he, too, understands.

"Yours." He guides her thumb over the clasp, exerting only enough to pressure to tell her what to do. She is the most apt of pupils.

He throws himself backward to avoid her fire. She has always, will always burn more brightly than any sun. When the heat recedes, he peers from behind his shielding hands to find her the woman she was before, but fear has gone completely; the love, however, is there for all of time to see.

She smiles, "Doctor," as though there could never be anyone else. For him, there could never be.

She knows this face now, this face that she didn't recognize at first sight. _I've become someone else since I lost you, please love me anyway. _ "_Your_ Doctor," he assures her, crawling on hands and knees to touch her again.

She curls seeking fingers into his hair, leaning toward him until they're all but nose to nose. "Always?"

"Always," he vows and kisses his wife for the first time in far too long.

**…**

Her daughters become his daughters the moment they meet. Isola and Siora are young women with their mother's once-vivid tresses and are brilliant though quiet. He has gained a warrior queen and two warrior princesses in addition to his borrowed Centurion and impossible girl. The idea that he ought to leave them behind is never voiced, for to leave them would be to forfeit the woman he loves and he is not that strong today.

The mystery of the enigmatic artefact that summoned them draws in the entirety of their hodgepodge family and they're off to the races. There is something waiting for them in the mountain, it calls to them all in similar fashion. It has risen. The Pandorica is no longer mere fairytale, she is very much a reality. And she is waking up.


End file.
